Public Financing

Arnold Hiatt, the former CEO of StrideRite and a prolific campaign donor, wants to decrease his own influence on elections. In this editorial for the Boston Globe he urges support of the Fair Elections Now Act in the Senate, and its companion bill in the House to create a public financing option for congressional races.

Tom Swan, the executive director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group, a driving force behind Connecticut's public financing program for legislative and statewide office, writes in this op-ed about his organization's growing disenchantment with the mayor of Hartford, Connecticut and the hope for a municipal public financing program.

Cabell Brand is a Virginia businessman and a longtime anti-poverty activist and he's written a strong editorial in the Roanoke Timesin support of full public financing of campaigns at the federal level as outlined in the Fair Elections Now Act. He argues that every issue we grapple with has a money in politics angle, and only when we address that angle can we make real policy change.

According to Dmitri Vassilaros at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, campaign finance reform is a)"chilling"; b)a tool of The Man to keep citizens away from government; and c) waaay too popular among elected officials. First, thanks Dmitri for making the campaign finance crowd sound so fascinatingly evil -- I feel like I should be writing this from a mountaintop hideaway while petting a pit bull and twirling my gold pinkie ring.

Harken back to the Philadelphia Clean Elections pledge when we teamed up with individuals and organizations who wanted to put candidates in the city on record in support of a full public financing option for campaigns. It would seem the idea has reached the statehouse, where State Rep.

Thanks to everyone who made calls to their legislators in support of North Carolina's public financing pilot program for Council of State races. This weekend, the state House passed the program on a vote of 59-57. From here the bill goes to the Senate. The pilot program covers the races for state auditor, superintendent of public instruction and insurance commissioner.

The Denver Post dips its toes in public financing waters with this cautious editorial advocating better disclosure of how campaigns are funded. Their hesitance to endorse public financing for national or Colorado elections outright certainly stems from their assumption that it would follow the model of the current presidential public financing system.

Will John McCain's campaign be the next to feel the fatal squeeze of the dollar chase? As he sheds campaign staff and re-considers opting into the public financing program nearly all the candidates have turned down, McCain is an object lesson in how lopsided our elections have become in favoring the best check-collectors: the viability of his campaign is being judged on the money, not the merits.

Marianne Means at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer laments that unwritten rule of running for President: you better be rich, or know plenty of rich people, to have a chance. Unfortunately she also seems to think that public financing of elections is no longer possible: it is, just not in the current model of the presidential public financing system.

The Orlando Sentinel has been supportive of full public financing of congressional elections in the past and this recent Supreme Court decision to remove some of the limits on television advertisements by corporations and unions moved them to editorialize in favor of public financing again as a way to level the electoral playing field in light of this recent ruling.